Have you settled back into the New Year? Have you already broken some resolutions about working smarter not harder? Are you looking for a little diversion as you wolf down your sandwich sitting at your desk? Have no fear, the glamor and excess of Vegas-style design computation is right at your fingertips!
Every year, of the hundreds of classes that are presented at Autodesk University, a select few are recorded and posted for the world to enjoy. And even of those that are not recorded, there are datasets and handouts that are free for the taking. For AU 2016, we were thrilled to see that there were about 50 classes dealing explicitly with Dynamo workflows and even more touched on Dynamo content.
So many Dynamo classes means so many things! It means that people are using the tools in broad and diverse ways, and that they are a regular part of people’s lives and work and daily functioning. It means a whole community of professionals have changed the way they are thinking about design and teaching each other to change. For folks who have been involved since the early days of Dynamo, it also means that our baby bird has really left the nest and is building a life outside of our control.
So, how to access all this learning? The most comprehensively captured classes from AU 2016 can be found here. Most of these have recordings of the full presentations made on subjects from getting started with Dynamo up through sophisticated projects being executed in real buildings. Everything at least has a set of handouts or other datasets. (Note that you can monkey with the “Date Published” filter and also see Dynamo Classes that go all the way back to 2013! Behold, the orange nodes of legend!) You can also download the videos so you can watch/listen to them on your commute.
It’s exciting to see so many new names in this list. Many of these classes are taught by first time AU speakers, and many people who have lots of Revit experience and now moving into computation via Dynamo. While I recommend looking around for classes that might appeal to your particular office’s needs, I’ll highlight a few that might slip by you.
ES21515: The Undeniable Benefits of Parametrics: A Stadium-Design Case Study, presented by Shawnee Finlayson of Arup. If you are looking to make the case to your employer about why you should spend more time learning and applying Dynamo, this is a great handout. Although it was not recorded, Shawnee does a fantastic job of outlining the time savings found on projects using Dynamo with very clear metrics around “this is what it takes for us to do X manually, and this is how long we take to do it now”. Don’t worry too much about the images of goat races . . . you kind of had to be at the presentation to get it.
AR22128: Paneling with Intent to Fabricate, presented by Colin McCrone and Jaron Lubin of Safdie Architects. Colin is a Dynamo rockstar and has more experience talking about Dynamo than just about anyone out there.
CS21802: Dynamo for Construction Workflows by Brendan Nichols of The Beck Group. This has some great applications of Dynamo in the later stages of the design processes.
AR20427: Code Blocks Not Required—Dynamo for the Rest of Us by Paul Aubin. Looking to get started in Dynamo or looking for a quick start for someone you know? 45 minutes of your time and you’ll be up and running.
DP23097: Design Computation Symposium. Phil Bernstein, Autodesk Fellow, Valentin Heun, MIT Media Lab Fred G. Martin, professor of Computer Science at University of Massachusetts Lowell David Gilford of Intersection, Rajaa Issa chief software architect of Rhinoceros’ Paneling Tool plug-in Martha Tsigkari Foster + Partners Ryan Welch, KieranTimberlake participated in a half day symposium on the topic “Ubiquitous Computing: How Computing Is Being Made More Accessible.”
It’s hard to just call out a few . . . and I haven’t had a chance to review them all yet. Please take a little time and look around, tell your friends, download and enjoy!
Community
Autodesk University is also a time for community building. There was a Dynamo User Group party, featuring glowing drinks, Dynamo discussions, and an awesome show reel of content submitted by many groups from around the world.
A Dynamo Design Slam was held in the booth Tuesday night. Kyle Martin, Colin McCrone, Ian Siegel, and John Pierson all competed to redesign the Las Vegas strip in a lively exchange. Ian and Anthony were the judges but deferred to the will of the people. The crowd response for John’s design was the loudest.
Dynamo could also be found sprinkled throughout the event. A great example awas the Future of Making Things booth, from the Autodesk Office of the CTO. Dynamo was driving a robotic welding station on the show floor. Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Additive Robotic Manufacturing, all using Dynamo!
And is that a little bit of Dynamo driving the future of connected design in Amar Hanspal’s mainstage presentation of Project Quantum?
So welcome to 2017! Lots of exciting things happening in design computation. Many things to learn, new tools to use and old ones to master. Looking forward to AU 2017 and lots of conversations in between.